


The House That You Were Born In

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Issues, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylux Classique™, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reluctant Partnerships, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 19:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13014693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: “When I was a very young child,” he says, flat and cold, “after the siege of Arkanis, I was told that the Empire needed children.” And he tilts his chin upward, eyes glacial. “Well, how fortunate for them, given it seems that is all they’ll have of us.”After, they talk.They're adults, after all. And that's what grown men do.





	The House That You Were Born In

**Author's Note:**

> So, after watching _The Last Jedi_ I have all sorts of FEELS about exploring a new dynamic with kylux, and this fic is basically my first (rough and ready) attempt at doing so. I feel I should warn it IS more along the lines of Kylux Classique™, i.e. they're a far bit nastier than in my more recent stuff, though with that said it's probably more in line with my earlier stuff. There's also some degree of violence to it, but even with the power differential between Hux and Kylo as far as I can tell it's consensual, if not safe nor sane, as they say.
> 
> At any rate, if you're reading this, thank you! I've had a shit of a year, and this fandom is one of the things that have helped me through some particularly dark moments. I shouldn't even be here, really, but...I am, and I'm mostly glad to be. I'm hoping that by reining in a few personal demons I can have an even better fandom experience this time around, so...if you've been there before, or we're just meeting now: thank you. Always feel free to come chat over at [tumblr](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/claricecsorcha). <3

“They’re gone.”

And it’s not even the rebels that he thinks of when he says so. But they _are_ gone – streaking across the galaxy in that cursed ship, far beyond even the reach of his desperate grasp.

Yet Luke had never been within his grasp at all, and that’s the worst of it. The Force is disturbed, shimmering and strange as it moves about Kylo now, and yet it seems the most peaceful of endings. Luke Skywalker achieved what he had aimed for in coming here. After so many years closed away, hidden from the worlds he knew and those who never knew who he truly was, he has opened himself up entirely – and in doing so, he has been taken home again. Kylo rages against it, even as the bitter sting of envy leaves his mind clouded, hands shaking, mouth pulled back from teeth in silent fury.

But the voice beside him comes cold as ice, like the snow that had once packed hard over the molten heart of his deadstar planet. “They _are_ gone.” And his voice gains strength with every careful syllable, staccato sharp fire. “And we still have work to do. There’s no time for tantrums.”

Kylo whirls, mouth opened in inarticulate snarl; about him, the air tastes of ozone and sulphur, the charge of it shifting under his skin like stirred blood. Hux meets his eyes – and with lips downturned, his eyes remain wide as he stares at him in something not quite a grimace. The lean body remains relaxed, yet Kylo does not see it as a tell of the man’s lack of fear. It seems more a learned instinct: that the impact might hurt less, that way.

“You are the Supreme Leader.” Hux tilts his head back, just enough to look down his nose for all they are almost of a height. “So: _lead us_.”

His palm itches with the sudden desire to backhand Hux, to send him stumbling again into the same wall he had so recently made the intimate acquaintance of. Indeed he still wears the ghost of a freshly inflicted bruise, already purpling over the high pale cheekbone. And Kylo’s mind turns hard on the thought of what the mottled palette of his neck might comprise: deep ugly purples, throbs of blue, fingertip shadows edged with grey-black and shot through with streaks of fierce crimson?

“ _Ren_.”

His words are harsh, as if he is the one speaking through bruised and bled vocal cords. “Don’t you use that name.”

The bare upper lip curls back, but the words are clipped and utterly correct. “ _Supreme Leader_.”

It’s almost absurd, that the man should still taunt him now. But Hux has ever pushed up against all boundaries built about him. Kylo remembers still the split lip he’d spotted but days ago. It had not quite been hidden beneath a fine sheen of bacta when Hux had stormed from the throneroom, shamed after the idiot loss of that dreadnought.

Yet, for all the loss of his power, it’s Hux who holds his silence now. Kylo grits his teeth around the words, spits them out in frank demand. “What do you want?”

“Orders.” He doesn’t smile, but there’s something of a cruel curve to his words. “Will you give them, then, or shall I just do it?”

The cockpit crew around them all look very intently at their screens, or to the brutal ruin of the salt plains, pitted and ripped to bloody shreds. Kylo curls his own lip, slashes one hand in sharp dismissal as he turns away.

“Do it.” As the door hisses open to grant access to the rear cabins, he adds with fresh venom, “And do not disturb me until I summon you.”

There’s no support crew in the back of the Upsilon; all of her weaponry and flight controls are on the front deck, leaving the back for storage and support. While not overly large, that space yawns around him now, dark and silent in its emptiness. He yearns then, sudden and fierce, for the solitary cockpit of his TIE Silencer. For its sharp confines, for its lack of ability to contain anyone but Kylo himself. There, he could turn away: there he could streak across the black and never once look back to what lay in his wake.

But much as he would leave the past behind, as much as he’d demanded the girl do the same – he knew he could not. His polluted blood might make such course hard to resist, but he need not give into the base urges that had so driven the one to sire him.

He’s been in his private bunk for perhaps three minutes when he feels the strange tightening of the air around him; the engine sound rises to sharp hum as the jump to lightspeed begins in earnest. Kylo can only assume that with the _Supremacy_ gone, the _Finalizer_ will again their shared base of command. Or – his _sole_ command. Nothing need be shared with Hux, not now.

It is as if mere thought might summon him, Force-null though the man has long proven to be. He should not have the codes to Ren’s command shuttle in general, let alone to its most private quarters, but there he stands. Standing at the room’s far edge, Kylo watches as the door hums closed at his back, lock clicking over to the highest security. But Hux’s hands do not rest there, as they usually would in his preferred parade stance. Instead they lie at his sides, gloved hands not yet quite fists.

“When I was a very young child,” he says, flat and cold, “after the siege of Arkanis, I was told that the Empire _needed_ children.” And he tilts his chin upward, eyes glacial. “Well, how fortunate for them, given it seems that is all they’ll have of us.”

In reply Kylo offers only a silent stare. It provides little information he hasn’t already gleaned. In truth, Hux has not looked well since the fall of Starkiller, though given his own wounds Kylo knows he likely can’t claim any the better. Even the delicate repair operation he’d eventually allowed to his face hasn’t stripped him of the physical memory of such humiliating defeat.

But Kylo still does not know what had happened in the first two standard days after his extraction from the dying planet. He had been sedated, floating in the restless dreams of bitterest bacta. While he had never expected Hux to appraise him of the details of the general’s first debrief upon reaching the _Supremacy_ , neither had his erstwhile master offered any elaboration upon his statement of, “The General still has his uses.”

Much as he loathed to admit as much, Kylo had known Hux rarely slept even before Starkiller. But afterward it had seemed that the man appeared anywhere and everywhere at all hours. From what little Kylo bothered to learn, the various tiers of crew had lost little respect for him. The ‘troopers remained as devoted to the cause as they ever had been. Certainly, even with the loss of their superweapon, the Order had been gaining victory and ground both with every passing day. There has been no real reason for them to lose faith in Armitage Hux.

But Hux has been withdrawing in upon himself. Despite having always harboured the suspicion that most of the man’s personality serves as some sort of façade, Kylo sees the difference. The ever-increasing stress combined with deprivations of sleep and sustenance have left Hux a jumpy shell of a man. His tongue might be as sharp as ever. But he’d turned twitchy in Snoke’s presence. And now, in Kylo’s own—

“I am not a child,” he says, purposefully harsh. And Hux grimaces, though it seems like he’d been trying to sneer instead.

“We might as well be.” The door remains at his back, Hux himself unmoving, eyes fixed upon Kylo even as they take on a contemplative air. “Though one would suppose we’re orphans, now.” There’s every intent of cruelty in the last of it. “Self-inflicted or no.”

Kylo lowers his head without dropping his gaze, a predator before the charge. “The student must always master the teacher, if they are ever to learn the truth.”

“And here I thought you said the orders of both Jedi and Sith must end.” Hux even manages actual mockery, thinly as it lies over parchment skin. “At least you’re not moping about Snoke’s death, I suppose.”

Hux has ever known how to choose his words. Yet Kylo is nothing but Incredulous, even as fierce fury lurks somewhere, waiting and watching. “I should kill you for that.”

“But you won’t.” There’s no satisfaction to this smirk. “I’m still useful to you,” he adds, and manages a snort to match. “Much as you enjoyed speaking over me earlier, you’re not a commander of men and machines. When the fight is down to the dregs, you want to go out there alone.” The straightening of his spine now seems an unconscious gesture, his hands slowly slipping to link at the small of his back. “You need me to stand here behind you and command when you do.”

Kylo offers him a sour smirk of his own. “And what? Do I just stand there and wait for you to stab me in the back?”

A careless shrug is all he offers, lie though it may be. “Could you blame me for trying?”

There’s a fight here, and he should be ready to see it through to inevitable victory. Kylo tilts his head instead, hears his own words as more curious than accusing. “Have you been drinking?”

“No.” The answer seems reflexive enough to actually be true. In the half-shadows of Kylo’s room, Hux seems more diminished than ever even as he raises an eyebrow. He’s more shadows and skeleton than a fully functioning human when he adds, almost careless, “just not sleeping.”

It’s more than that. The faint noise of his mind sounds to Kylo like static upon a screen, with only the barest hint of conscious clarity.

“My father was never there when I needed him,” Kylo says, sudden and vicious; Hux just nods.

“My father was always there. _Always_.” The words congeal, harden, itching scab over a wound which will never heal. “That doesn’t mean he gave a damn for what happened to me.”

Kylo comes across the rumours that criss-cross the Order’s capital ships in several ways, but the most recent and rampant aboard the _Supremacy_ had been about one of Hux’s last conversations with Snoke. Though it does seem hard to think of such as a _conversation_ , given it had ended with Hux slammed to the floor and twisted to Snoke’s will.

But they say he’d tried to continue as if nothing untoward had happened. That is what Kylo remembers, because it is what the crew remembers. He doesn’t need to ask if this is the way Hux would see it, too.

“Take off your tunic.”

Both eyebrows rise almost comically high. “Excuse me?”

“Take it off.” Pursing his lips, he says with easy insouciance, “I can make you do it.”

The working of his throat heralds a strange and flickering expression upon his face. It’s quickly caught by the tightening of skin about his eyes, and the shift of a jaw to accommodate the clenching of teeth. Hux then rolls his eyes, reaching for the buckle of his belt. It’s polished to such high shine that Kylo would assume the man would use it as a mirror, if that somehow wouldn’t demean the dignity of the entire ensemble.

There’s a taste of salt upon the air, like sweat and worry; still, the general’s hands move smooth over the unseen catches beneath the breast of the jacket. Once undone, his hand rises to the high collar, pausing there. Yet before Kylo can said a word, Hux flicks it free, skinning out of it with both military efficiency and lifelong familiarity. It ends with Hux standing in the same place, faintly defiant even in compliance, the tunic folded neatly over the arms joined low before his hips.

Kylo doesn’t care for that now. Instead his gaze fixes upon his throat, a patchwork glory of bruise and break. There’s no sign of healing, nor the faintly sour scent of bacta. But then, Kylo had scarcely given Hux time enough to comport himself before he’d been summoned back to command beneath his new leader.

There’s no conscious thought now behind the movement. Kylo simply glides forward, raises his hands, and closes them about his neck. It’s but the ghost of a touch, barely a collared hold. Still, the feel of Hux’s skin burns through even Kylo’s thick gloves, the rabbit-quick jump of a pulse in his neck so easily felt. Their eyes have locked, again, and Hux’s expressions wavers between resignation and disdain.

“I thought you said you still needed me.”

Kylo blinks. “ _You_ said that.”

“Well.” And Hux leans forward into the touch, Kylo’s thumbs slipping seamlessly into the divots beneath his jaw. “That’s what advisors are for, isn’t it?”

“There are other things.”

He hadn’t meant to say it. From the startled expression so briefly upon his face, Hux certainly hadn’t expected to hear it. And now disdain morphs to disgust, though still he makes no movement to escape from Kylo’s loose grip. “What, are you still horny after that scavenger girl turned your dick down?” This is no smile; it’s a smile both wide and generous, the closest he’s ever seen to genuine good humour in the man person. “Well, I’d say you had the bluest balls in all this sector, but in truth she’s still got them right there in her pocket, hasn’t she?”

The instinct is to crush, to pulverise the fragile bones beneath his grip, to twist until it tears – until hot blood spills the way it never does with lightsaber strike. Instead, Kylo shoves their lips together, lips hard against Hux’s own, swallowing all sound. Shock lasts only a second: then Hux surges back to meet him, fingers twisting in his hair. If not for the gloves the man still wears, no doubt nails would have drawn blood from his scalp. As it is, their teeth clash painfully as both seek the same angle, noses pressed together. Hux even manages to tread on his toes, for all they ought to be well-shielded. For all Hux ought to weigh little more than that damned girl herself.

Something of this is her fault. But it many ways, it is nothing of the sort. It’s Hux alone that Kylo thinks of now as he shoves him back up against the wall, crowding his slender form, pressing against him in all ways. There’s too much of him, it seems: his stupid smirk, his ridiculous hair, the too-wide padding of his shoulders and the narrow invitation of a tight-belted waist. Kylo’s hands go there now, fiddling at the buttons and failing. Hux huffs an exasperated sigh into his mouth and pinches him in the side.

It doesn’t hurt, not really, for all Hux had accurately targeted the remaining scar tissue of the bowcaster wound. But Kylo pulls back, mouth half-numb and full of spit, and glares.

“What?”

Hux just rolls his eyes, again, and shifts his weight; a moment, and Kylo realises Hux is artfully shimmying his way out of his precious uniform, without the slightest regard for where the pieces may fall. “Do you have anything useful in here or not?” he asks, and Kylo is dumbfounded enough to struggle with that one word.

“Useful?”

“ _Lubricant_.” A shift of his weight, again, and the press of a narrow hipbone against his own clothed groin leaves Kylo smothering a gasp. “I’m assuming you want to stick that monstrous thing in me.”

He frowns. “Monstrous?”

A hand moves down between them; ungloved, now, the fingers prove pale – and then disproportionately strong where they press hard against his crotch. “I’m sure you realise you’ve extraordinary gifts in many senses, Lord Ren,” he says, his accent both proper and decadent in each syllable. “So. Do you? Because I’m now allowing this unless you’ve got something here for it.”

It’s just one hand, now, closed about that narrow wrist; Kylo closes his fingers tight enough to feel the slender bones in the man’s wrist. “Perhaps I’ll just take what I want, whether you like it or not.”

And Hux makes no attempt to pull back, nor to break his grip. “Oh, it’s far more complicated than that, isn’t it,” he drawls, and though Kylo can still taste the faint hint of fear, Hux’s posture is the supreme unconcern of a two credit Nal Hutta whore. “So? Yes or no?”

It’s more instinct than intention, but Kylo jerks his hips forward in unmistakable gesture, crushing Hux’s hand between both their dicks. The thinned line of his lips does nothing to conceal the arousal he shares. Kylo allows himself the quirk of his own lips, then turns, mind already casting about the room. There’s no real lubricant, but a tube of bacta is easily enough located. When it’s tossed back to Hux, still backed up against the door he’d locked himself, the general examines it with a half-sneer before snapping the cap open.

“Well, I suppose at least if there’s a little rip and tear, it’s less mess.”

“ _If_.” It comes so easy, so laconic. “ _If_ , he says.”

“You’re a beast,” Hux snaps back, eyes flashing with sudden anger; Kylo laughs, sudden and surprised.

“I think you like it that way.”

There’s another flicker of something odd, across his features. Then he’s turning away, voice oddly rough for that affected Imperial accent, rhotics and all. “No point in dragging it out,” and his hand has moved back, slender wrist at acute angle as he reaches towards his own ass. “It’s hardly that complicated a transaction.”

That might be true, save for the fact that they have not so much as mentioned the terms of such a contract, let alone discussed them in depth. Kylo finds he doesn’t much care as Hux first shifts forward, then bends down over the low single bunk, legs spread and hips tilted back. It’s the sort of sight he could watch for some time, and he does. These are the same fingers he’s seen gloved, dancing over screen and keypad. They’ve directed soldiers, shifted artillery and ship. Now they slide in and out of his exposed hole with uncomfortable squelch, muscle in low pink spasm around the intrusion.

“Do you always take this long?” Hux says, the snotty snobbishness a perfect replica of a high society life Kylo would rather forget. With a snort, he begins to strip himself bare. His cock is already fully erect; he allows a brief stroke, of thumb and two forefingers that twists to the base before rising again to pull the foreskin fully back. Hux straightens enough to look properly behind himself, apparently needing one of his endless status updates; his expression rages with a war of fascination and repulsion.

“I always knew you were some sort of barbarian.” Raising an eyebrow, he then turns again to reveal his narrow little shanks. “Well? Get on with it.”

It’s such a small space between them now. Kylo strides across what little remains of it, catches him around the waist, turns him. Sitting himself on the bed, Hux crowded between his own opened thighs, he makes sure this smirk is enough to disconcert the man even more.

“You want a throne, don’t you?” Kylo moves forward, smiles wider as Hux leans back. “But can you really sit upon one?”

A twist of lips, and a flash of teeth – then those long-fingered hands clamp upon shoulders, nails digging deep accusation there. A hand moves behind, proves surprisingly cool about the heat of his own dick. Then Hux is rising up, shifting down; there’s the urgent press of sudden resistance, and his descent halts. A grunt, and a shift, and the press of panicked muscle – then, a rich slow slide inward, swallowing Kylo whole.

He speaks only when it is done, strained and too quick, pupils blown wide as newborn singularities. “I’ll take what I can,” Hux whispers, and Kylo presses forward, whispers back against still lips.

“Of course you will.”

Hux wrenches back, and there he rises. But he must descend, too. He cannot stay there forever. It is the endless cycle, both doomed and destined to always repeat. His thighs, quivering and white with but faintest dusting of red hair, support him with impressive stamina. Kylo’s still more interested in the richer shade at his centre, where his cock rises in angry crimson heat. He’s cut, as Kylo himself isn’t. And he cannot resist the urge to touch it, faintly curious as he trip-walks calloused fingertips over the twitching length.

And Hux stops, hips cradled in Kylo’s own lap. When he glances up, Hux shakes his head. “No need,” he says, accent still almost perfect save for the faintest sharp strain in the vowels. “I’m just here to service you, yes?”

That eyebrow arches again, without consent. “You would be the worst servant I had ever possessed.”

Again he snorts, though makes it worse with a small circle of hips; as Kylo’s dick gives an approving throb, Hux smirks. “Oh, yes,” he says, lightly sing-song, and clenches on the last word. “Lord Ren, the little _prince_.”

Hands close about biceps, hard enough to bruise, manacles to match the collar at his throat. “I am your master now,” he hisses, and Hux sighs, jerks three times, and ceases.

“I am no Jedi, and I am no Sith,” he says, and Kylo scowls deeply.

“But you are my general.”

“Am I really, then?”

It’s impossible to know how he could look so disdainful, with a cock up his ass and hair in perfect riot of disarray – with his face red and breath beginning to labour. But he shifts, again, and work himself anew. Works them both. Always, he works.

Large hands close about narrow hips. “Stop.”

He seems bewildered before he remembers he’s not supposed to display that emotion. “What? No.”

“I said _stop_.” It holds the resonant ring of the compelling Force, but Hux still stutters again, jerking himself up and down on the cock still buried to its hilt inside him. Kylo pays this motion no heed, twisting, falling upon him. Everything is but rutting, then: rough and ruthless where he thrusts between the general’s opened legs. For his part, Hux writhes beneath him in ways that press them ever closer together, breathless complaint turning to slow whine, to sudden wail; only when the heat between them slows does Kylo withdraw. There, kneeling before and above him, Kylo works his dick with a full fist, five or six hard strikes before he comes on that narrow heaving chest.

There, debauched in the bed of Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux stares up at him in perfect dislike. “I hate you,” he says, and Kylo snorts, flops down beside him. There’s hardly the room, but he doesn’t care.

“I don’t need your admiration,” he says at last, and Hux shoves at the elbow poking his abdomen before subsiding once more.

“But it would help.” The bitterness is sudden, not unexpected. “He had us always fighting like children, squabbling like seabirds over scrap.” When Kylo glances over, it is to find Hux’s eyes fixed upon the bare ceiling. “And to what end?”

Kylo follows his gaze, finds nothing there. “What end, indeed,” he mutters, and puts the elbow back where he’d first had it. “We should be landing soon. You should get dressed, make yourself decent.” When Hux glances over, he adds, “Hardly fitting for you to disembark with the new Supreme Leader looking as though you retained your command with a performance on your back.”

But there’s no shame in his eyes, for all Kylo isn’t even sure that’s what he wanted. “Is that not what this was?” he asks, something genuinely curious in the words. And Kylo’s own reply is something he himself cannot hope to understand.

“I don’t know.”

Levering upwards, Hux blows out an exasperated breath, begins to climb over him in the prissiest manner of limited contact. Kylo just waits for the right moment. Jerking his hips up, his sticky cock skims the even stickier crack of his ass, and Hux’s sleight weight collapses atop him. There, he glares down. “If _you_ are all that we have now,” he says, fierce, bitter, “then we are surely doomed.”

Kylo just stares. “The Empire needs children, you said.” This time, he lets Hux go. “But we are not the Empire.”

“But are we children still?”

And Hux stands before him now, naked as the day he was born. But everything of him is rigid, now, the perfect stance of a soldier at perfect attention. His own body is at languid rest, but it is no longer the gangling awkward thing it had been. It’s something hard and long, bulked with muscle and battle, hardened metal forged in the twinned crucibles of war and betrayal.

“Perhaps it’s time to put away childish things,” he says, and Hux only nods.

“I am general of no toy soldiers.” His head jerks to the door, unspoken command. “And you have a castle to be king of.”

A snort, and he waves him away. “I will see you on the flight deck, then.”

There’s something else upon Hux’s tongue. But it remains unsaid, even as he gathers his things and returns to his precious command. Closing his eyes, Kylo remains upon his back, allowing his breathing to slow to even careful count. When he opens them, again, he sees only the hard black of the ship interior.

Hux had designed the thing, years ago. He’d made sure to match it to Ren’s favoured aesthetic, he’d said. All dark. All black. There’d been no obvious mockery in the words, but there had been something else in his eyes. Kylo still doesn’t know what it was. But it doesn’t matter. It’s dark in here, again.

He doesn’t need the light. Not when the dark is the only thing that will ever know the truth of what Kylo Ren is now, and will one day soon become.


End file.
